oh tzipi. after 32 months of wearing whatever the heck i chose out of a drawer for you, why did you decide that you were going to wear only three outfits in constant rotation, exactly one week after i dropped like a $100 on new winter clothes?

seriously. if i'd known you were only going to wear two dresses and a sparkly shirt with cupcakes on it for the rest of your life, i would have spent the $100 on new shoes.

I mentioned to my mother, whom is in Mexico on vacation, that Miles needs a pair of winter boots in a bad way and that I was going to take him to some stores over the weekend to try on some pairs. She emails me today, still in Mexico, that she ordered two pairs of boots for him from Zulily. 1. They are girl boots, both pairs. 2. One pair of them has a 1 inch heel. 3. They are leather. 4. THEY ARE OBVIOUSLY forking GIRL BOOTS.*** 5. You can't return items to zulily. I nicely mentioned all these things too her, minus the leather part because she will never ever get it. She says she didn't know that they were girl boots because the site didn't say so...it's so obvious. Whats wrong with him wearing girl boots? and....the 1 inch heel will make him taller. He's 1 1/2 years old and already tall he doesn't need to be taller or wearing a heel! No 1 year old should be! You are on vacation lady...this shiitake actually ruined my day and I've been fuming about it all day now.

I just wish she would stop doing this and she never will. I feel she should know by now that I'm very particular. She would buy me clothes when I was a little girl without my approval, I would refuse to wear them and she would get angry. Stop buying stuff without my approval then! Reno is very particular about what she wears and I know that and will not just randomly buy her clothes without her ok because it is a waste of money. I wish she would do the same. This is all made worse by the fact that my mother is the one person in the whole world who I can't say what I really think about all of this. Plus she lives below us in a 2 family house which would make her reaction to my truthfulness about this even more horrific. So now my son has to wear these hideous girl boots.

oh tzipi. after 32 months of wearing whatever the heck i chose out of a drawer for you, why did you decide that you were going to wear only three outfits in constant rotation, exactly one week after i dropped like a $100 on new winter clothes?

seriously. if i'd known you were only going to wear two dresses and a sparkly shirt with cupcakes on it for the rest of your life, i would have spent the $100 on new shoes.

this gets even worse when they're older, and you bring back the expensive new clothes and shoes from frigging new york in a backpack that you have to carry through three bloody airports, and then the child says "but i never really liked it, you know. you can't make me wear it."breathe in, breathe out......

I am a jerk. I agreed to pick B up at the airport when I knew L was likely to be asleep. I figured I could get her nto the seat without really waking her and that she'd go back to sleep quickly even if she did wake. Except that it is cold and rainy. So she then screamed for 30 mins on a dark highway with cars whizzing by, in an dodgey area where I didn't feel safe stopping. She is nursing and I hope I can get her down by the time B arrives. Poor baby. :(

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

That's rough, Tofulish! It's so hard to make those calls. Sometimes they really will stay sleepy and happy.

So Iz decided to bite Z today. It was awful. Z was sitting between Iz and my partner, and all of a sudden we heard the loudest, most heartbreaking wail, and on his chubby little hand was a fresh bite mark. Poor baby! We took care of the situation right away, but not long after the bite, Iz told us he did it because he wanted to tell Z that he loves him. He uses this excuse for anything, especially totally un-related things. It's half hilarious, half aggravating. (Excuse number two - "I miss my Uncle Dewek!" - who lives far away. Even for things like he's crying about us asking him to put on shoes when he doesn't want to.)

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

Jenna, would Toys for Tots take the boots? You could maybe just say they didn't fit him and you had to donate them. Or what Refinnej said, toddlers lose shoes like Sarah Palin loses g's at the end of words. Fit is in the eye of the beholder, a little!

*hugs* to Tofulish, been there.. some days I would give a limb or two for a toddler-sized removable bucket seat.

For the second time this week Ada was up at four something. This morning she was just screaming and nothing was comforting her, and nursing lately is just killing my nipples. I am pretty sure her two year molars are coming up on the bottom. She finally drank some water and requested her Elmo doll around 6:00 and went back to sleep for an hour and a half. And she skipped her nap (which i have been taking with her) twice this week so I am just exhausted. It's not helping that I still can't eat a large variety of food. Needless to say there has been a lot of kids Netflix this week.

We went to a drop-in music class this morning, and there were a bunch of kids and parents we didn't know. Two kids brought toys with them (winnie the pooh figurines and a Santa Claus action figure) that apparently NO ONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO TOUCH OR LOOK AT. My feeling is that if your toy is so very special to you, don't bring it to a class full of babies and toddlers, or if you do don't take it out of your pocket, and especially don't leave it in the middle of the room, run off to do something else, and then flip the fork out when a two year old approaches your abandoned toy. Am I off base, because these kids' moms seemed to think so. One mom said to me her son (probably four?) "doesn't like to have to share," and she tries "to respect that." what the fizzle? My emotions are pretty raw right now and these crassholes almost made me cry.

One mom said to me her son (probably four?) "doesn't like to have to share," and she tries "to respect that." what the fizzle? My emotions are pretty raw right now and these crassholes almost made me cry.

Uh... I'm "what the fizzle"'ing right along side you. I haven't met the kid who is a natural born sharer. It seems pretty obvious you have to teach it.

Granted, we do let our kids have ONE special toy they don't have to share. As siblings, we make them share almost everything. It seems important that we allow them something individual. But, again, if they just dump it somewhere and freak out when someone grabs it my kid is the one who will be scolded.

_________________Gwyneth Paltrow: "I'm superstitious. Whenever I start a new movie I kill a hobo with a hammer."

Mitten, we have run into similar situations before and yeah, it's not just you... I find it totally maddening.

Recently this parent brought his 5 year old to the park with one of those giant electric jeep things. The kid did NOT want to share it at all and was flipping out whenever ANY kid even approached it or looked at. And his parent was telling people, "oh, just don't look at it." Um, what? You brought a huge shiny toy to a playground full of little children and you're expecting... that they'll all just pretend it's not there while your kid tears around in it?

We don't do "you have to share" exactly but we do "you have to take turns." When you're done your turn (when you put the toy down, move on to something else, etc), then someone else can have a turn. You have a toy that's too special for these rules to apply to it? Then the toy stays at home in some safe place (like E's baby doll, which stays in his bed unless he's playing with her).

We also pretty much never take toys out of the house (because E flips if he loses a toy) and if we do, we make sure we take 4 or 5 (small trucks or whatever) so that E can be playing with some and we can share some. I stole this idea from another parent we saw at the park back when E was like 1.5... He brought a big bag of matchbox cars, dumped them out on the ground and said, "anyone can play with these" which mollified both the circling 2 year olds and his own not-into-sharing 4 year old. I thought it was the most amazing idea.

I hate when other kids bring toys to play with in public spaces. Then I have to spend the entire time wrestling Malka away from them and managing her freak out. This happened at the indoor play space on Sunday - a kid had a couple of matchbox cars and Malka was obsessed with them, following him around for half an hour trying to get at one (he was like 4 or 5) and finally she got one and he freaked the fork out. His mom, luckily, was happy to make him share one with her since he had other ones with him anyway. (Of course she only wanted the one in his hands, but that's another problem.)

I am sorry Mitten. FF says it perfectly. I am sorry for you are hurting.

I really like Kelly's statement in another thread that she takes Silas away and says "Oh we didn't want to play with that [person], let's find something better!" Its a cool way of redirecting. I like all the ideas about toys to share - we don't ever take any anywhere, she likes other people's toys way better than her own anyway. We are in a Gentle Discipline playgroup, where we practice managing conflict with our children or talk about challenges and its so interesting to get new strategies.

I really like the mom friends I have because we all have similar ideas of gentle discipline (which IMO has to include both gentleness and discipline). We were in the library with some friends, and one of the babies wanted to play with a toy that an older kid was playing with, and the mother pretty much just murmured "Oh no we don't do that" when her kid shoved the baby off his toy. Sometimes it takes all I have not to rip a parent a new one.

Its like the dogpark, if you're going to take your child to a public space, do the best you can to respect the fact that the space is shared and do your best to not introduce elements that can cause conflict. You're not allowed to bring toys that dogs can get territorial over to the dogpark. The only thing that is allowed are yellow tennis balls.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Even when the mothers and kids don't mind it, I'd prefer if people not bring privately owned toys to public play spaces.

I had a similar experience as Ariann at the baby gym - there are a million things to play with and play structures *already there*, but of course some preschooler comes to open play with a couple of matchbox cars..that I then have to repeatedly drag V away from. Don't need that! I mean, the mother didn't seem to care if V played with them, but I felt like I had to police her and it just makes it less fun for everyone.

Sweet jesus, yeah, that mom was crazy. Obviously kids don't like to share at that age - don't act like that makes your kid Special.Ezra always takes his favorite toys in the car when we go somewhere, but when we get out to go wherever we're going, he knows to leave them in the car. Yeah, some kids might not like doing that, but it beats dealing with an emotional toddler and trying to keep track of Baby Parasaurolophus (our current favorite stuffed dinosaur).

Thanks guys, I didn't think I was being unreasonable. The other thing was during instrument time (the teacher puts out a big bin of drums and stuff and kids get to choose and play for the length of a song), this one mom was letting her kid hoard instruments. Her daughter kept bringing maracas and tambourines over to their spot and then going back for more, and when Walter walked up and picked up a frigging plastic apple with beads in it she told him he couldn't use it because her daughter had picked it out already. But, um, she wasn't using it, or any of the other communal instruments she had "picked." Like, the mom seriously told my kid he could not use a crummy plastic instrument that was just sitting there on the floor next to her. And I have a much lower threshold for this bullshiitake today, because although I was calm about this miscarriage yesterday, today pieces of placenta keep falling out of me, which is both gross and sad (tmi? too bad).

i'm thinking of you, mitten. hang in there. if i had been there i think i would have given the mom a piece of my mind (inadequate, porous and lumpy as that may be) for enabling if not encouraging behavior that will inevitably just cause problems for the kid.